The Lady's Tutor Read Free Page B

he meets her, and how long their
association has been going on.”

Chapter 2
     
    he heavy morning air pressed around the sour-smelling hack as if
it were a living entity, heart beating in time to Elizabeth’s heart, breathing
when she breathed. Her reticule, heavy with the book she had stuffed into it
outside the Bastard Sheikh’s door, pressed into the jointure of her thighs.
Outside the grimy window of the hack, dim shapes shifted in the lifting fog.
Vendors shouted their wares and servants haggled over their prices as if she
had not spent the longest thirty minutes of her life convincing the most
notorious womanizer in England to teach her how to give a man sexual pleasure.
    The
Bastard Sheikh’s voice mocked her still, a rasping purr of English civility. Do
you know what you are asking, Mrs. Petre?
    Yes.
    Liar,
liar, liar, liar, the
carriage wheels grated. A woman like her could not possibly know the price a
man like him would exact for carnal knowledge.
    Anger poured
over Elizabeth in scalding waves.
    How dare
he tell her that a man’s satisfaction lay in a woman’s ability to receive
pleasure, as if it were her fault that her husband kept a mistress!
    The smell
of his perfume—his woman’s perfume—clung to her nostrils.
    It was as
if he had wallowed in it.
    No, it was
as if he had wallowed in the woman who had worn it.
    He had
smelled as if he had rubbed every inch of his flesh against every inch of her
flesh.
    Elizabeth
shut her eyes against the unbidden image of darkly tanned skin pressing down,
around, and inside a woman’s pale body.
    Blue and
green lights flashed behind her eyelids.
    No, the
lights were neither blue nor green. They were turquoise. The same color as were
the Bastard Sheikh’s eyes.
    His hair
was English and his skin was Arabic, but his eyes belonged to neither the East
nor the West.
    They spoke
of places Elizabeth had never been to, of pleasures she had only imagined.
    They
had judged her as a woman and found her wanting.
    The rear
wheel of the hack fell into a rut, startling open her eyes. Bracing herself,
she stared at the worn leather facing her.
    Women like
her, older women, imperfect women, they would not be chosen by men like the
Bastard Sheikh, but they deserved pleasure, too, and she was not going
to back down because he made her feel every second of her age, every
imperfection of her body.
    She had
spent seventeen years being an obedient daughter, bending her will to that of
her parents. She had spent an additional sixteen years being a dutiful wife,
suppressing her desires that she not repel her husband.
    The
Bastard Sheikh had said there were twenty-one chapters in the book he planned
to school her with.
    She could
endure those mocking, knowing turquoise eyes for three weeks.
    She could
endure anything to get the knowledge that she needed.
    The hack
came to a tooth-jarring halt.
    It took
Elizabeth several seconds to realize it had reached her destination as opposed
to being jammed in traffic again. It took her several more seconds to locate the
door handle and wrench it open.
    The street
corners looked alien through the black veil, as if they had changed in some
obscure but overt manner in the past two hours. A change that could not be
accounted for by the mere passage of dark dawn into day.
    “That’ll
be one shilling and twopence, ma’am.”
    She stared
up at the cabbie.
    He was a
shell of a man, worn thin by lack of nutrition and fourteen-hour-long workdays.
A halo of light surrounded his head—the morning sun peering through the
overlying clouds of smoke and fog that surrounded London in November, December,
and January but had this year extended into the month of February.
    Elizabeth
was healthy and wealthy with a prominent husband and two sons. Why could she
not be content with what she had?
    Digging
into her reticule, she grabbed a florin and tossed it up to him. “Keep the
change.”
    He caught
it deftly and doffed his hat. “Thank’ee, ma’am. Will ye be